Locks, Landmarks, and a Very Small Paddlewheel
For years, if you spent any time at all around the riverbanks in Tuscaloosa, you couldn’t miss the sight of the Bama Belle. With her white railings, twin smokestacks, and that big red paddlewheel churning up muddy water at the stern, she looked like she had wandered straight out of a Mark Twain novel and decided to drop anchor on the Black Warrior River.
Originally built up north on the inland waterways before finding her true calling down in Alabama, she served for decades as the city’s unofficial floating front porch. Whether folks were celebrating a wedding, holding a high school prom, hosting a church fellowship, or just trying to beat the summer heat with a cool draft and a slow breeze, the Belle was where you went. She eventually aged out of her river duties and moved along to quieter berths, but anyone who ever stood by her railings still carries the memories—some peaceful, some scenic, and a few slightly wild.
Over the years, I managed to log three distinct voyages aboard the Belle, and each one felt like an entirely different chapter of river history.
Voyage One: Downriver and the Big Drain
My maiden trip was a daytime outing with Mom. We boarded on a clear afternoon, found our seats on the deck, and pointed south toward the lower stretches of the river. Now, if you have never been through a river lock on a passenger boat, it is quite an experience to wrap your mind around the first time you do it.
We pulled into the massive concrete canyon of Oliver Lock. The Belle tied off securely to the floating bitts along the slick wall, and behind us, those colossal steel gates swung shut with a dull, hydraulic shudder that made you feel like you’d just been locked inside a fortress. Then, the lock tender pulled the plug.
You don’t feel a sudden jerk; you just notice the sunlight slowly creeping away. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the water drains out of the chamber, and the boat sinks down into the cool, damp shadows. Looking up, all you see are towering concrete walls dripping with river moss and river snails, with a narrow strip of blue sky high overhead. Once the water levels equalize with the lower pool, the front gates creak open, the engines rumble to life, and you glide out into the open river below town.
Heading downriver past Tuscaloosa isn’t exactly what you’d call a tropical sightseeing tour. It’s working country. You pass the heavy industrial footprint of the BF Goodrich tire plant and the tall stacks of Hunt Refining, but once you clear the factories, the river settles into a quiet rhythm of red dirt cutbanks, wide sandbars, and the occasional glimpse of green cotton rows and soybean fields stretching toward the horizon. There aren’t many cliffs down that way, mostly just the steady brown water and thick riverbank willows. We ran downstream for about a dozen miles, took a wide, sweeping turn in the channel, locked back through to ride the water elevator back up, and docked safely back at the landing. It was a fine, easy couple of hours on the water.
Voyage Two: The Upriver Sunset Cruise
My second trip went in the opposite direction, and it turned out to be the real scenic route. Heading north from the city docks, the river takes on a completely different personality. You pass beneath the highway bridges and the great, towering spans of the railroad trestles, watching the steel trusses loom overhead before the river opens up toward the higher ground.
As we chugged along upriver, the shoreline showed off a little bit of everything. We cruised past the sprawling footprint of the old paper mill, rows of private boat docks tucked into the coves, working gravel and coal-loading chutes clanking in the distance, and the high plateau where the university sits perched above the valley.
Before long, we approached Holt Lock and Dam. Going upriver through a lock is the exact reverse of going down: you pull into a cavernous, empty chamber, the lower gates shut behind you, and the pumps boil water in beneath the hull, lifting the entire boat smoothly toward the daylight like a toy in an overflowing bathtub.
Our captain on that trip was an ambitious fellow. He announced over the loudspeaker that he intended to steam all the way up near Lock 17 if time permitted. But the Black Warrior is deceptive; river miles always take longer than road miles, especially when you are churning against a steady current in a boat built for leisure rather than speed. After about two and a half hours of steady cruising, the captain looked at his watch, realized the clock was ticking, and gracefully spun the Belle around for the homeward leg.
That turn turned out to be pure luck for the passengers. By the time we retraced our path and neared the city, the late afternoon light had begun to break into an absolute masterpiece. The sun dropped low behind the bluffs, painting the Alabama sky in deep purples, fiery oranges, and dusky golds. When we slipped back under the arches of the river bridges and the silhouettes of the railroad trestle, the dark water mirrored every color in the sky. We docked that evening feeling like we’d seen the river at its finest.
Voyage Three: The Reunion Survival Guide
My third cruise was less of a relaxing scenic tour and more of an exercise in tactical evasive maneuvers. I was hired to serve as the official photographer for a local high school class reunion aboard the Belle.
On paper, taking photos at a riverboat party sounds like a pleasant evening with a camera around your neck. In practice, nobody warned me that a boatload of middle-aged alumni, fully loaded on cheap draft beer, cocktail sausages, and nostalgia, have a very complicated relationship with a flashbulb.
When people have had a few drinks and are busy reliving their senior year of 1978, the last thing they want is a fellow sneaking up to snap a high-resolution photograph of them mid-sentence or mid-stumble. After my first few attempts were met with icy glares, defensive hand-waving, and some pointed suggestions about where I might stash my camera lenses, I quickly assessed the tactical situation. If I didn’t want to find out whether my photography gear could float in forty feet of river water, I needed to change my approach immediately.
For the rest of the evening, I adopted the stealth of a blue heron stalking minnows in the shallows. I tucked myself into the shadowy corners of the deck, blended in next to the paddle housing, and fired candid shots from long distance without making eye contact. They enjoyed their appetizers, danced to the music, and shouted over the hum of the engines as we made a wide, easy cruise up the river and back without going through the locks. I delivered the photos, kept my equipment dry, and considered the mission a complete success.
A Matter of Perspective
One of the most entertaining things about watching the river traffic around the Belle was the sheer contrast in scale.
At one point during her tenure, Tuscaloosa hosted a traveling replica of one of the Spanish galleons that sailed during the Age of Discovery. (Now, we all know the Vikings beat the Spaniards to the continent by a few centuries, but for the sake of local tourism, we gave Columbus his due.) The replica looked the part with its rigging and carved timbers, though it hummed along on modern diesel power. Tied up next to the Belle, that famous ship looked practically like a rowboat. The Belle seemed like an ocean-going cruise ship by comparison.
Then, about a year later, the legendary Delta Queen steamed up the Black Warrior all the way from New Orleans and tied off right behind our hometown boat.
The contrast was immediate and hilarious. The Delta Queen loomed over our little riverboat like the great white whale preparing to swallow Jonah whole in a single gulp. It put everything into sharp perspective, reminding all of us that while our local attractions were charming, the mighty rivers of the deep South operated on a whole different level of grand.
Eventually, the years caught up with the Belle. Her decks began to show some wear, the paint needed tending, and the river cruise operations finally came to a close. But looking back on those three distinct trips—the quiet afternoon locking through the bottomlands with Mom, the brilliant purple sunset reflecting off the trestle, and the wild night dodging tipsy reunion guests from behind the snack bar—she gave us some wonderful memories on the water.
If they ever decided to bring an updated riverboat back to the Black Warrior, give her a fresh coat of white paint, and point her upriver toward the bluffs at sundown, I’d be the first in line to buy a boarding pass.